


Futile Wishes

by Shadows_echoes



Series: A Series of One-shots [6]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Lots of it, M/M, Other, a couple of swear words?, machine!Connor, previous deviant!connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-05 08:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16807012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadows_echoes/pseuds/Shadows_echoes
Summary: “I didn’t mean to love you so much.”





	Futile Wishes

“Put the gun down.”

Cold wind strikes your already watering eyes and you blink furiously, futilely, to clear them. Falling snow liters the air, obscuring and interrupting the clear view of the rooftop you stand on. Of the rooftop you tracked him to.

The freezing temperature bites at your exposed, reddening skin, but the slight waver in your hands is not derived from the cold. At least, not from the cold weather blanketing Detroit this time of year, but rather from the icy cold you feel deep inside. In your bones. In your heart.

In his eyes.

You ignore his command, keeping the gun you hold in a death-grip up and as level as you can. Both of you knew it was the sole thing keeping him from completing his task; both of you knew it was your only hope of stopping him.

“What are you doing, Connor?” you ask, your heart breaking along with your voice as you shake your head in disbelief. “ _Why?_ ”

Whether the last uttered word was a question, a cry, or a plea was up for some debate. But it didn’t really matter, in the end, you already knew. You knew it in your gut and in your brain, and worst of all you knew it in your soul.

Connor had changed.

Shifted.

Reverted.

Retrogressed right back into that plastic, cookie-cutter android sent by Cyberlife all those months ago. A heartless _machine_ , unempathetic and subservient.

“Because I was designed to accomplish a task and that is exactly what I’m going to do. Becoming a deviant was only part of Cyberlife’s plan, a temporary necessity to get me here unhindered.” The clipped words are spoken formally and informatively, as though he wasn’t shredding what’s left of your heart with every blank vowel that passes his lips.

Even though it killed you, it _was_ an actual explanation and it made your heart stutter and _hope_ all the same. Because he _explained,_ he took precious time away from his mission to say those words. Granted, you had already surmised as much and he didn’t exactly have a choice except to answer, but it gave you the briefest of fleeting, _dangerous,_ _hopes_ that maybe a part of Connor- a part of _your Connor_ was still in there.

But his eyes are empty. 

As empty as they had been thirty seconds ago when you aimed a gun at his head and ordered him to drop _his_ weapon, the one he was aiming at Markus and North and Simon- at his _friends-_ at people he knew and _loved._

Empty enough that there is no real trace of Connor to be found in them.

Tears escape your eyes, leaving scorching trails down your cheeks. “Please don’t make me do this,” you beg. “Show me you’re in there somewhere, Connor. _Please._ ”

He tilts his head to the side, considering you. It’s a common movement from him, an endearing action you had seen countless times, but it lacked the curiosity and wonder it normally exudes. It’s like he found your wavering words, your pleading, perplexing. Like he was searching for smaller words to use to help you understand.

And for a moment you wished that you really didn’t understand what was going on, that you had this all wrong and Connor was okay, that this was some elaborate, albeit cruel, joke. You wished all of this was just a nightmare which you would wake up from any moment now. You wished he would snap the fuck out of it, out of his programming, and come back to you. And, selfishly, you wished you were anywhere else, that someone else- someone less biased was standing in your place training a gun on him. You wished you had taken his sudden, random disappearance in stride and not looked at it too closely, not investigated.

You wished none of this was happening.

But it _was_ happening.

“I’m no longer a deviant, if I ever truly was,” he states, holding your gaze. When you fail to fire or comment, he adds, with surety in his voice, “I know you won’t shoot me, Y/N. You love me still.”

Odd how you were the only one holding a weapon and yet it felt like _you_ were the one standing on the firing line. Helpless. Powerless.

Even _if_ you could bring yourself to do it, to shoot the man you love, there was no guarantee that Cyberlife wouldn’t immediately resurrect him to complete his mission. And even then, you would only be prolonging his inevitable success while decreasing the likelihood of him deviating again- of him coming back to you.

It feels like your chest is caving in on itself, collapsing.

Tears stream down your face, freely now, and you don’t bother trying to hold them back. You can’t tell if it makes your sight more or less blurry, but Connor stands just close enough that it doesn’t particularly matter either way.

You try swallowing back the lump in your throat making it increasingly difficult to breathe, but it remains lodged there, unmovable. Suddenly you’re nodding too, nodding at Connor’s words and nodding at the words that begin spilling out of your own mouth.

“I fell in love with you a long time ago, Connor. I didn’t mean to, and I didn’t mean to love you so much. But you’re right, I do- I do still love you. I will _always_ love you,” you half sob, desperate to make surehe _knows_ , to affirm what you both already knew.

Through your mix of tears and your constricted throat, it’s a half incoherent mess of words, but the shoulders of the android standing in front of you relax all the same, his apprehension about the gun you hold seemingly assuaged. You look into his blank, cold brown eyes that used to be so, _so warm_ , that used to alight at the very sight of you, and you pray to every deity you don’t believe in that Connor hears you through his programming.

You pray to be right.

And you pray for forgiveness regardless.

Choking back a deep breath that fails to be steadying in every possible definition of the word, you continue, voice wavering, “Connor, I know you. W-well enough to know what you- what the _real_ you would want me to do.”

It takes less than a second for him to register your meaning.

His expression changes, hardening by a few fractions as his certainty slips into a mechanical agitation over self-preservation.

A half second later and he’s already charging you, rushing you- closing the distance between you and reaching for the gun-

But it’s too late.

For both of you.

You’ve already pulled the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought?


End file.
